Identification of strengths and weaknesses of cooperative efforts within the wider Caribbean using a collaboration network approach

Strategic planning for conservation of coral reefs is focused on building resilience by an integrated management approach based on cooperative efforts. Here, we built a connectivity network of Caribbean researchers using the papers presented at AMLC scientific meetings as a proxy of collaboration among organizations for five decades. We aimed to evaluate the usefulness of this analysis as a tool for identifying regional research gaps, key organizations that functions as hubs and prioritizing research efforts on a regional scale. For this, we extracted key information published in the AMLC proceedings and special issues from 1957 to 2013. Co-authorship among different organizations was used as edges, while country, study site and organization were used as nodes according to the network. Overall, the number of collaborations increased in time from an average of 0.89 organizations per research in the 60s, to 3.8 in the first decade of the millennium. However, the number of isolated nodes and components suggests that most of these collaborations were kept in small groups. The organizations with the highest value of centrality (i.e., intermediary institution) were the University of West Indies for the Antilles, the University of Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico and Florida, the CINVESTAV for Meso America and The Universidade Federale do Rio de Janeiro and the Simon Bolivar University for South America. This result indicates that these institutions act as hubs and might constitute key partners in regional collaborative efforts in the near future. Results also indicate that coral reefs in Florida and Puerto Rico were the most frequently studied locations in the region. Our analysis shows the necessity of strengthening cooperative links between USA and Puerto Rican institutions with other research centers in the Caribbean for a most cost-effective conservation efforts in the region.